


notations in a pulmonary vein

by lady_peony



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen, Unhealthy Relationships, izaya should be a warning just by himself, one-sided feelings of a sort, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He finds Shinra eventually, three street crossings and two back-alley shortcuts later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	notations in a pulmonary vein

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings and such: minor spoilers for 2nd season of the anime and light novel 9. Izaya being Izaya ie possibly manipulative behavior.

Izaya keeps a balance running in his head. 

Not just all in his head. It comes easy for him, embedded in the slouch of his spine, the deliberate flick of a wrist, toes too near to skidding a degree off an edge, until he finds his next foothold, leaps and leaps and never crashes. 

The city is a carousel, all tilt-a-whirl hours and muddled outlines. Angled glass and gasps and shard-sharp neon. Photographs snap, cast lies and truths and rumors in pinprick flares. People fish secrets from the air, bloom them with malice or desire.

Look closer. Examine them from angle to angle, watching for the soft spot, the weak belly. How much push the blade needs. 

These are the things he breaks. Promises. Hearts. Answers. Make the mistake of thinking you have the reins. The knots slip loose, tie into your own blindfold, tripwire in one.

The sound of clicking stops. A laptop cover snaps downward, echoing in the quiet room.

"Tell Celty-san you got this at a discount. Almost a criminal rate." A murmur follows from the other end, tone unmistakably cheerful and evidently disagreeing. "Shouldn't your customer service be kinder to a regular like me?"

A dial tone answers. Wheels squeak beneath the shift of his chair, a thumb rising from the "End Call" button to turn the phone face down. A tilt of a smile, lifting. Not soft, only rain-blurred, reflecting in the window before him.

 

_

 

A shrieking noise in his pocket. The third time in the past five minutes. If it was Mairu again, he would consider giving the phone up to an unfortunate accident. A dive into a sewer, for instance.

"Orihara-kun?"

This was unusual.

"What is it?"

"Are you doing anything today?"

Even more unusual. Izaya grins, says, "I wonder if I am. I have a lot of homework this week."

A disbelieving noise on the other end of the line. "Sorry to bother you then, Mr. Vice-President. I can call someone else less important—"

The grin on his face twitches down. The title still swells up on occasion, even two months after their club had scattered, plants adopted away to a local gardening club of fifty-year old grandmothers.

"Well. If it's nothing, I'll just hang up."

"Hey! Just listen for a minute." Izaya gets a garbled anecdote about a cat-shaped pillow in an arcade, a trio of delinquents, and a glass bottle placed inconveniently on a sidewalk. 

He finds Shinra eventually, three street crossings and two back-alley shortcuts later.

"You're on a roof."

"Yes. I am."

Izaya blinks up at Shinra. "Just get off of it." The building is more of a storage shed really. Not even three stories tall, compared to the twenty-story building on the street-facing side. A crush of honking noises floats to their ears, mingling with scattered cawing of a swirl of crows.

"Well," Shinra starts and runs his fingers through his hair, a bewildered expression on his face as he looks from the roof beneath him to Izaya and back to the roof again. 

Izaya drops his backpack onto the ground. Skips a bit away from the building and runs. Right towards the wall beneath Shinra.

"What are you doing?" Shinra hisses.

"Are you sure your glasses are still working? Climbing this, of course."

"Why?"

"If you can't get down, I can push you." The fall wouldn't do more than break an ankle. Most likely. A clatter of something metallic wavers, wobbles off the side of the wall, inches from where Izaya's hand had been about to reach.

"Orihara-kun. When I called, I thought you would have a better idea, like getting me help. I forgot your ideas are always the worst."

 

_

 

"Is reading shoujo manga before exams appropriate behavior for a model student?"

"I'm conducting an important study! On girls' hearts!" Shinra pushes up his glasses, then lifts his shoulders as well, shrugs. "Other than a few inconsistencies, I think I have a rough idea of the range of methods." 

Izaya snorts. 

"Tired of fighting with Shizuo today?" Shinra goes on, a verbal swing of his own. "You know the impact a heavy object would have on a still-growing brain. But you never cared much for exams either, last year."

Izaya slides a glance at Shinra, sees that he has already has his attention riveted back to the book in his hand. Surely, there are more things he could take care of instead of talking here. Look for more material for observation for one. Check up on Nakura-san. Finish his own book.

_("Thou art brave," said the Wolf, "and for this reason I feel pity for thee. I have eaten thy good horse, but I will serve thee a service in payment.)_

"While you're here studying, I have a date," Izaya says, "with Yumi-san. From Class 2B. If Nakura asks for me, I'm at home to look after my sick sisters."

"If you are planning to break her heart, try not to break it too badly," Shinra says, "It's not gentlemanly."

"Shinra." Izaya clicks his tongue after the syllable, shakes his head with mock-despair. "Do you really think I am such a terrible person?"

Shinra looks up from his page. His eyes are large, magnified behind his glasses. From a glance, anyone would think Shinra is soft—soft-faced, soft-voiced, except sometimes, just sometimes, there is a flash in his stare. Cutting searchlights through wires, after the reek of something ferrous in the water. "Try not to get in too much trouble." 

From his spot on his own desk, Izaya aims a kick at Shinra's shoulder, misses. "When have I ever?"

"Who got in a fight with a yakuza heir last week?" Shinra's hand moves over his notebook, the pencil tracing something which looks suspiciously like a heart. "A pity that human skin is so fragile. Even I know that girls—most people, actually—don't appreciate being observed as an experimental subject. You could get punched." 

"Aw, worried?" Izaya coos, as he slides off his desk and skips backwards, heading towards the door. "I trust you can fix me if anything goes wrong." 

 

_

 

Izaya gulps it down, lets his hand gently tip the glass back onto the counter. Whatever he had certainly is not going to be a regular order. 

He hops off the stool, slips past the laughter of a dark-skinned girl juggling empty bottles in a blurry circle, skips around a trio of boys with blonde-streaked hair screeching at each other. The floor is energetic, frenetic almost with the dizzying array of swaying limbs and music thudding with the walls, pulling a hundred heartbeats in its wake.

"Business or pleasure?" drifts to his ear, a lost snippet of chatter from somewhere on his left, and Izaya wants to laugh at himself. 

Time for work. 

Slinking through couples, through the revolving mass of college students and visiting heiresses, he picks up a few trifles worth his interest. He will slip those away, next to his pocketknife, and wait until he has sufficient leisure to toss them over in his mind.

One of the girls he speaks with, the third, at least can make conversation. Rika-san--or Rei-san?--attends Raira University. A second-year student of psychology and economics, a curtain of bangs stopping just above the thin frames of her glasses. "I did plan to research on a project today," she says, words straining a little to rise over the music. She takes a sip from her glass, raises her thumb to swipe at a drop falling off the side. Her lips are the same glittery shade as the violet loops in her ears. "Kyo-chan said we just had to visit here once. I don't suppose she was wrong. Not bad, isn't it?"

"I commend your friend on her taste. And for you," Izaya leans forward a little, lips stretching into a grin, "what else have you heard—"

A bellowing shout punches through the rest of his sentence. Izaya straightens slowly, as if he were only a little disgruntled, his ears chasing the accent and the instinctive drifting shuffle of a crowd backing away from a disturbance.

No flash of blonde hair. His knife can keep its teeth hidden, for some time still.

"Trying to get me in trouble, hey? Think to tangle me with another of your messes?" 

"—an easy job. There's no one else there. Just some brat. A rich boy's son, from some family of doctors. "

"If you aren't lying with your rotten tongue like last time, where is it? The boss wants to know."

The next lines of their shouted exchange is lost under a sudden spike in the music.

Well. Rei-san will have to wait for another time. He has enough leads for now anyways to keep his client happy.

Five rooftops later, a piece of paper stares silently at Izaya from a door, hiragana dashing into each other in hurried spirals.

_Dear neighbors! :))_

_Sorry! i am out on a business trip with my father. please leave my packages with the doorman._

_Orihara-kun. Just because I am out does not mean you can break into my apartment. It does not count as a sleepover if_ I am not there.

_If you do break in, leave the pudding alone._

The dessert tastes even better than expected when he eats it while lolling around on the couch, his legs thrown over the armrest. He pokes his tongue out to lick the last trace of brown sugar syrup from the spoon, stands to place the empty cup on the front counter, visible in the line of sight of anyone standing at the door. 

His hands make a few other adjustments in other corners, though he doubts anyone else will notice. 

A strain of neighing in the distance, like a jealous siren. So. No time for goodbyes then. 

Shinra really should change his locks.

 

_

 

_"Kida Masaomi is my friend!"_

_"Oh? Are you sure he still feels the same way?"_

How terrible, the weight of cowardice. Honesty is too rare a gem. He knows the taste of both, if only on his own tongue. 

Half the reason, he supposes, he wants to know so much, peel through the epidermis, down through tissue and cartilage, blood and bone, just to reach the core. Truth, light-spun, mirror-bright.

Shinra would, with his hands, stitch them back up, holding things together until the scars closed.

Izaya is not that kind.

**Author's Note:**

> +reference from [Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf](http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/firebird/index.html%20)
> 
> +i guess that middle school episode wasn't a fever dream huh.


End file.
